The Empress and the Acolyte

After three years of studying with the Empress Bykoda, Jemeryl has learned all that the elderly sorcerer can teach her and is ready to return to Lyremouth. However, before she leaves, Bykoda reveals a grim secret - an oracle of death, and asks her to perform one final assignment. Jemeryl must take Bykoda's talisman to a place of safety. Failure will mean complete destruction not only in the present, but also the past.

While in Tirakhalod, Tevi has been working as an officer in Bykoda's army. It has been a difficult time for her, living in a land where those who cannot work magic are treated as insignificant. Only Jemeryl's love has made life bearable. With the return to the Protectorate drawing close, she hopes that the worst is over. However, somebody is after the talisman, and that person is willing to commit murder to get what they want.

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The Empress and the Acolyte

Tevi and Jemeryl, soldier and sorceress, must risk all in the race to uncover a traitor and retrieve the chalice that, in the wrong hands, could bestow dangerous powers.

A dark presence is threatening to uncover long hidden secrets, and the future of the whole Protectorate is at stake. Without allies to help them, Tevi and Jemeryl will need to rely totally on each other; something made all the more difficult when the rest of the world seems intent on pulling them apart. Events will force them to re-evaluate their assumptions about society and their places in it. Success will require making difficult choices, even while they battle for their lives.

The quest for the stolen chalice is a sham - her family's excuse to get rid of Tevi. Exiled in a dangerous and confusing world filled with monsters, bandits, and sorcerers, Tevi battles demons within and without as she searches for her place in the strange new world.

Jemeryl has her future planned out - a future that will involve minimal contact with ordinary folk who do not understand sorcerers. Her ambition is to lead a solitary life within the Coven and to devote herself to the study of magic. It is all very straightforward - until she meets Tevi.

Two unlikely allies join forces to defeat an insidious evil and on the journey find one another.

Jemeryl and Tevi's relationship is put to the test when the Guardian sends Jemeryl on a mission that lands her not only in harm's way, but also back into the sights of a previous lover.

The Protectorate of Lyremouth promises liberty for all its citizens, but this does not mean that everyone is equal. When Jemeryl is summoned alone to Lyremouth, she suspects it is a ploy to separate her from her lover, Tevi. After all, many disapprove of their relationship‚ not because they are both woman, but because Jemeryl is a sorcerer and Tevi is not. The task Jemeryl is given, to track down an ex-lover who has turned renegade on the Coven, does nothing to assuage her doubts. However, old bonds of affection are enough to make her accept the assignment, even though she is sure that she has been told only half the true story.

But Jemeryl is wrong‚ she has not been told even a tenth of what is behind this mission. When Jemeryl does not return, nobody can stop Tevi from going after her.

Sergeant Chip Coppelli escaped the manipulative plots of her powerful family by becoming a soldier. After 9 years in the elite Rangers, dealing with thugs and wild predators, she has learned to spot trouble coming, and that is exactly what she sees in the mystery surrounding her new recruit, Katryn Nagata. But even so, Chip was not expecting murder.

When you're short on friends and long on enemies, things can't get much worse. Until they do...

Ranger Riki Sadiq is known as a troublemaker, and in the close knit heretic community, a bad name is hard to lose. Standing sentry duty on a winter's day, all she can see lying ahead is an afternoon of being cold, miserable, and bored. Her mood isn't helped by deliberate goading from people who are supposed to be working with her. Even so, retaliating in kind isn't one of Riki's better ideas. When Riki is dispatched to Westernfort for one last chance in the Rangers, the hostile reception means her list of enemies has become still longer, and prime candidate to head the list is her new patrol corporal, Tanya Coppelli. It is hate at first sight. The way Riki sees it, Tanya may have good looks, talent and sharp wits, but is that any reason to like her? However, if Riki but knew it, trouble of a deadly kind is heading her way. With their lives at stake, Riki and Tanya will have to overcome the mutual antagonism and learn to work together.

Lynn is an imprinter, one chosen by the Goddess to receive her greatest gift‚ that of creating new life. So why does she feel like a prisoner in the Temple?

When Lynn learns that she is to be relocated to the temple at Landfall, the arduous journey seems more like a gift—her last chance to see something of the outside world. She does not anticipate the dangers and temptations she will encounter along the way, nor does she expect Lieutenant Kim Ramon, an officer in the squadron of Rangers assigned to protect her. Despite all prohibitions forbidding it, attraction grows between the two women.

Against them stand the powerful religious Sisterhood and their holy warriors‚ the Temple Guards. In a world ruled by the Church, what chance is there that Lynn can escape?